


If I Die in a Combat Zone

by Sab



Category: The X-Files
Genre: (Uploaded by Punk), Dreams, Gen, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2000-09-23
Updated: 2000-09-23
Packaged: 2017-12-03 09:33:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/696837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sab/pseuds/Sab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If I die in a combat zone / Box me up and ship me home. / Pin my medals upon my chest /And tell my Mom I did my best. (Uploaded by Punk, from you guys are just fucked.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	If I Die in a Combat Zone

**Author's Note:**

> Homage paid to Tim O'Brien and Full Metal Jacket, who used this jodie call before me, and far better. No disrespect is meant. No disclaimer is necessary; no betas were harmed. This one is for august, just because. And yes, Virginia, I am.

If I die in a combat zone  
Box me up and ship me home.  
Pin my medals upon my chest  
And tell my Mom I did my best. 

+++

They call the hill 470. 

That's for its height in meters, that's how they've read it marked off on a topographical map, title and city names written in some foreign language she's never heard of in strange characters she can't begin to pronounce. But the numbers are clear, the numbers and the voices and the orders and all these kids, they know why they're here, take the hill, all four hundred seventy meters of it, take it, stake it, step over the casualties and don't get blood on your boots. She doesn't know why it's this way.

It's always the same. It starts the same with the voices that all sound like kids, shouting kids, her kids, braver than she'll ever be. It takes her a moment to get her bearings; she can hear the bullets, they sound like insects against windows, nattering annoyance, something to shut out; she can hear the grenades. The ground crunches. She sits up, it's always the same, sits up against the sandbag and checks to see if her legs are still there. They are, and every time she wonders why she thought they wouldn't be.

There are kids in the foxhole with her, they're bleeding but they're smiling; she always notices their smiles. They grip their rifles with white-knuckled fingers and they smile over bloodied teeth and she knows the blood tastes like gunmetal. She wants to ask them, speak to them, but she feels guilty. 

She's here for a reason. Someone ordered her here, her, and the kids, here to this hill meaningless except for three digits, its height in meters. Someone called out orders but that was a long time ago and she only vaguely remembers it and when she presses against her brain for the reason she comes back with blood and those kids smiling. She knows that, in her gut, like when you walk into a room and think "why did I come in here again?" but the best she can do is recall that she was ordered, and the most she can do is comprehend four hundred seventy meters of hill to be taken -- it has to be, it needs to be, do it, charge, die -- and then she feels guilty again. 

Her voice never works. No sound comes, even when she looks around at the kid next to her, still smiling, who's closing his eyes now, his thumb over the picture of his girlfriend -- sometimes it's his daughter -- taped to his gun. 

Shots ring out again, louder, there's a shout, there's a series of shouts and then footsteps, dozens of soldiers spill in to the hole and kneel on the sandbags, eyes to sights, firing. She ducks and covers her head and feels guilty again. 

Someone's calling her name. Someone needs her! She's supposed to be doing something, watching someone's back but she can't remember, damn it, it's slipping, it's all happening so fast and she can't remember what she's supposed to be doing, what her orders were, and now they're not calling her name any more, and the dozens of bodies are stilled and lay bloodied in a heap in the foxhole, burying her. She tries to call out and gets a mouthful of flesh. Just wait just wait just hold on I'll remember I'll remember! Way the hell too late.

She wakes up, then, feels her hand splayed across her stomach, feels her own sweat and thinks at first that it's blood. She tries to remember how she got here, but the dream slips away before she can grab at it and she feels guilty again. It's a long time before she's asleep again. And she's never quite rested in the morning; it's been weeks now, and she's never quite the same.

She doesn't know why she's in this, any more, without him. But every night she falls asleep and has strange dreams about war.


End file.
